“Rodney, do it now,” Burls said in the talkie.
One of the bodyguards gave the baron’s arm a subtle squeeze. A second later, Smith jerked back as if clubbed in the breastbone—eyes wide with alarm, hands swinging up violently to claw at the phantom pain in his chest. He crumpled to his knees and tottered forward; the bodyguards grabbed him before his head struck the cement.
Confusion swept through the onlookers.
Like a seasoned actor, the baron stuck to the script—staying down, rolling onto his side, writhing as the bodyguards dropped to their knees to assist him. Then he went rigid.
An eerie silence fell over the crowd.
The taller bodyguard yelled to the bobbies, “Call an ambulance!”
The mob flip-flopped from confusion to elation, as if witnessing the England national team moving the ball upfield at a World Cup match. The shorter bodyguard tried to find a pulse on the baron’s neck; after a few seconds, he shook his head. The mob began cheering, people jumping up and down, and high-fiving, and hugging one another as if their team had just scored a goal, while the riot police stayed on high alert and kept their Plexiglas shields high and tight.
“Excellent. Now let’s move him inside,” Burls commanded through the talkie.
The bodyguards hooked the baron under the knees and armpits, hoisted him up, and quickly carried him back into the building.
“I must say,” Jeremy said, reviewing the video capture. “It’s bloody convincing.”
# 47.02
By 2:00 P.M., U.K. media outlets from Twitter to BBC News were abuzz about the baron’s rumored death—despite the fact that the body remained out of view on the sixth floor of the Windsor Arms and that neither the authorities nor insiders had yet officially confirmed or denied the claim. Nonetheless, the breaking news was picked up in short order by Reuters, with footage of the protestors celebrating the baron’s demise beamed round the world, the excessive liquid refreshment making the scene reminiscent of the climax of a New Year’s Eve countdown. This clip, in turn, lit up global newswires, social media sites, and the blogosphere. Thanks to the NCCU’s ingenious campaign of misdirection, rumors of the baron’s high-tech assassination by an enterprising hacker were well on their way to becoming gospel.
Meanwhile, in the penthouse’s masterpiece kitchen, Jeremy sat hunched over his laptop, doctoring the helmet-cam video file, splicing it with top secret code copied from an encrypted flash drive that connected like a fob to his key ring.
Cocooned within his opulent study, the baron reviewed his press while sipping brandy as stage two of Operation HUCKLEBERRY FINN commenced.
Burls ordered the cybertechs back at the Home Office to begin flooding the Twittersphere with rumors that the police were canvassing West London for a suspected cyberassassin spotted by BBC News cameras outside the Windsor Arms at the time of the incident.
Then the taller bodyguard came into the room and announced, “Sir, the ambulance has arrived.”
“Excellent,” Burls said, checking his watch. He glanced over at Jeremy, who was busily working his magic, cutting and pasting lines of code. Despite Bounty4Justice’s sentient functionality, the analysts at GCHQ had theorized that the kill-confirmation video submissions had to be authenticated by a human being, who would cross-reference the claim to news events in order to make a final determination as to whether the bounty would be awarded. Human intervention meant human error, the logic went. And human error meant an opportunity for exploitation. “How much longer, Jeremy?”
Jeremy threw up one hand imperiously. Hackers were a quirky bunch, and his was the most critical function of the operation. So Burls gave him his space and waited in silence.
Finally, Jeremy eased back in the chair and ran his fingers through his tangled hair. “Right, then. Brilliant. Once this file is uploaded and opened by the recipient, we’ll need him to watch it for just under ten seconds or so for the scripts to fully execute. Then we’ll have complete access to everything on the other side—hard drive, keystrokes, webcam, microphone, everything. He won’t know what hit him.”
“All right,” Burls said. “Go ahead and submit the video. In a little while, we’ll bring out the body.”
The New York Times @nytimes• 17m
The Justice Department could learn a thing or two from @Bounty4Justice…seriously.
nyti.ms/1ngzT431e
# 48.01
@ Washington, D.C.
08:49:01 EDT
The Ascher children had been enrolled for guest visitation at a venerable private institution that occupied a full city block in the heart of Georgetown. With a big old church surrounded by pristine red-brick buildings, the complex radiated privilege. Considering all the open ground to cover, Jones thought homeschooling would’ve been the smarter choice. Lock the doors, shut the shades, hide the kids out of view in the brownstone’s basement. However, the grand objective was to have the children maintain a normal life and keep them oblivious to the fact that Mommy had a $750K purse hanging over her head.
Jones turned his head to the backseat. “This looks like a really nice school. You guys excited?”
Samantha shrugged. “I dunno.”
Max made a sour face and stared out the window.
In the driver’s seat, Vargas looked equally dour. He’d barely said a word to the kids. Jones figured his partner, with five children of his own back home, simply had nothing left to give these two. In all fairness, he had to admit that when one joined the nation’s most elite law enforcement agency, babysitting detail wasn’t exactly what one envisioned. At least Max and Sam were cute and polite. Just ordinary little people caught up in extraordinary circumstances. And with Bounty4Justice using them as leverage against their mom, the threat was real.
Vargas bypassed the line of cars at the main entrance, where the trophy moms waited to hand off their precious cargo, and circled to the back of the campus. At the gate for the service entrance, he held his badge to the window for the elderly security guard. The man had already been advised of their arrival and snapped a crisp salute before shuffling back to his kiosk to activate the gate. “That’s gonna be you, cuz,” Vargas said to Jones, grinning and pointing to the guard. “You wait and see. Just give it a few years.”
“Screw you. You’ll be right there with me.”
“Not so sure, my man. That’s an awfully tiny booth.”
The gate tilted up. Vargas saluted the guard and proceeded along the narrow driveway between the buildings and into a spacious courtyard, where he parked in the guest slot closest to the bright yellow doors designating the administrative entrance.
“All right, kids,” Jones said, “let’s go see your new digs.”
The agents got out and helped the kids step down from the Yukon.
Samantha looked up at Jones and said, “You’re not coming into my classroom, are you?”
“Probably not. Why, do you want me to?”
She shook her head. “It’s okay. I can handle it. Mom says I’m a big girl now.” She reached up and held Jones’s big paw. “Besides, I think you’re way too big to sit in a kid desk.”
“I suppose I am,” he said. He didn’t have children of his own, but his wife was in the end zone, waiting for a Hail Mary. He’d been reluctant to take the plunge into fatherhood. Lots of unresolved issues with the way he’d grown up, in the Bronx, plus some mental baggage from all the shit he’d seen over in the Middle East when he’d worked Special Ops. Still, Samantha was selling him on the idea.
Vargas circled the SUV, traipsing behind young Max, who looked utterly morose. Vargas just shook his head, as if he’d been subjected to this mood a million times before, back home.
They didn’t see or hear the runners until the very last instant—two wiry guys, wearing some crazy-ass Halloween masks, sprinting silently, as if they’d materialized out of thin air. They ran straight at Samantha, scooped her up, and whisked her from Jones’s grasp. Just like that.
“Watch him!” Jones yelled to Vargas, p
ointing toward Max, who’d responded in the worst way imaginable: by running off. Vargas pulled out his SIG Sauer 9mm and chased after the boy.
Jones was already in full sprint, closing the gap to Samantha, who was ten, maybe fifteen yards ahead, screaming and thrashing in the arms of the masked man, who carried her like a rolled-up carpet. Out across the courtyard, he spotted a second pair of masked sprinters swooping in to intercept the boy. “Vargas! Two o’clock!” he yelled over his shoulder, pointing at them.
At six-four, 215, and just a month shy of thirty, Jones had achieved what he’d deemed his peak fitness level. He was a machine. A goddamn sinewy badass weapon forged of muscle. At least that’s what he told himself in order to tap into his adrenaline reserve. This would be the true test. This was the moment that would define the next decade. Somewhere behind him, he heard the blam-blam! of Vargas’s pistol. Damn. No time to look back.
Then came the sound of screeching tires, and a black van skidded out from around the building, gunning straight for him. That pissed him off. Now all the pistons were firing, and he was nearly on top of the masked duo. In midstride, he pulled his gun and fired at the van’s windshield, five shots in rapid succession. Didn’t stop the van from swerving right at him, and he barely dodged its front bumper with some fancy footwork harkening back to his college football days. The van skidded to a stop, its side door slid open, and another masked man materialized. This one swung a gun point-blank at him and squeezed off a couple of shots aimed squarely at his torso. Jones had his vest on, and he hoped that the jabbing sensations he felt against his ribs—invisible fists knocking him sideways, nearly making him stumble—would leave only bruises. Regaining his footing, he surged ahead, at the heels of Samantha’s abductors, with the runners directly in the gunman’s line of fire. The shots stopped coming his way.
He heard Vargas firing rapidly. That father of five was once a fucking Olympic marksman. Look out, fellas, you’re all toast, he thought. He pushed himself to the limit, flicked his SIG Sauer under a parked car, and dove at the abductors, in the middle, hooking each man around the neck while throwing his bulk sideways for torque. That slight spin brought everyone down into a tumbling heap. Samantha screamed and rolled off to the side.
Up close like this, Jones had learned early on, martial arts and complicated spins were useless. Forget the Hollywood bullshit. It was all about dominance and position, and fists and elbows and knees, Bronx-style. He jumped up, fast, and dropped right down again, using his right knee as a pile driver against the first guy’s head, which was still low to the ground. He heard the dry crack of the skull and a whimper. He snapped back up to a standing position. The taller man had also been quick to get to his feet, his wolfman mask turned sideways. Jones lunged at him and locked his arm around the guy’s neck while sweeping his legs out to get him back down on the ground. Then he squeezed the arm lock hard. Really hard. Until there was no resistance…no movement.
That’s when he saw the gunman from the van standing in front of him, not even three paces away, wearing a Disney princess mask—Jones couldn’t decide if it was the mermaid or the one from that new movie that had come out just this past summer—his weapon aimed directly at Jones’s head. Game over, he thought. Blaze of glory and all that, but I’m going to die at the hands of a goddamn princess. He heard himself assuring glibly: They’re in good hands, Senator…I promise. Yeah, right.
Another gunshot sounded, like the loud crack of a cherry bomb, and he knew he was dead. But the princess mask spat red, and the shooter recoiled and crumpled to the ground.
Behind Jones, the old man from the gate came trotting over, his pistol still puffing smoke.
“They broke through the gate! Are you okay?”
At first Jones didn’t respond, just looked out across the courtyard. Then he saw Vargas walking toward him, towing Max by the arm.
“Yeah. We’re good.”
Washington Post @washingtonpost • 9m
Georgetown: Shootout between Secret Service and would-be child abductors at exclusive day school leaves one man dead.
wapo.st/1TcW54mt
# 49.01
@ Long Island
09:38:07 EDT
Michaels met Special Agent Tammy Reynolds at the Panera in North Babylon. They ordered coffee and scones at the counter, Michaels’s treat, then sat at a bistro table near the window, away from the wandering ears of a retirees’ book club and some middle-aged men slouching in the comfy leather chairs, silently poking around on their laptops.
Tammy was a super-fit, forty-four-year-old brunette with a Wharton MBA whose idea of relaxation was competing in triathlons—a fireplug of a woman: fast mover, fast talker. She was based out of the Secret Service field office in Newark, New Jersey.
“Thanks for finding the time to meet with me,” Michaels said.
“Don’t mention it,” she said. “Gives me a good excuse to take a break and have a little girl time.”
Long Island was a hotbed for counterfeiting and money laundering, but Newark was an even bigger one, so Michaels knew that Reynolds was burning the candle at both ends. When people typically thought about the Secret Service, they pictured big men wearing dark suits and sunglasses and earpieces who secured the president’s motorcade or the press area out in the Rose Garden. Few thought about the Tammys of the agency, even though the Secret Service Division had been established in 1865 as an enforcement arm of the Department of Treasury, at a time when the fledgling U.S. government was grappling with the flood of counterfeit money in circulation after the Civil War. It wasn’t until President William McKinley’s assassination, in 1901, that the Secret Service began taking on the responsibilities of protecting presidents and skewing its ranks to giant rough men.
“You hear about this thing with Barbara Ascher’s kids?” Tammy asked.
“Yeah. Unbelievable.”
“Can you imagine if something had happened to those kids? God. As a mother, it just sends shivers down my spine. I don’t care what she did, but this is going too far. It’s like there’s nowhere to hide from this nutty website. It’s a damn menace.” She shook her head. “Anyway, let’s hold off on the shop talk. First, I want to hear how you’re doing.”
Once again a bachelorette, Michaels had little to tell about since last they’d met, other than a jaunt to Barbados in September, a couple of good movies she’d seen, and licking her wounds from her most recent breakup, a few months back, which by most measures had gone rather smoothly—just two grown-ups who’d squared up to the fact that great sex couldn’t compensate for the true chemistry needed to carry on through the golden years.
Reynolds said that she was training for an upcoming race in Georgia, then shared the antics of her two teenage boys, complete with visuals from her phone’s picture gallery. She talked about her husband, Ted, a freelance network security consultant, who was all jazzed up about the windfall he anticipated, thanks to Bounty4Justice scaring the shit out of every IT person in the world. And that segued nicely into a quick recap concerning their most recent mutual investigation.
“I heard about our pal Alan Bateman,” Reynolds said with a wicked smile. Bateman’s Medicare scam, at heart, had been one big financial fraud, laundered on the back end by the Armenian crime syndicate; this connection had, by default, brought Tammy into the mix.
“Crazy, right?” Michaels said.
“I’d say. You know that car bombing is the MO of the Armenians, right? That’s their shtick: the chip clip under a rear tire. There’s been no kill-confirmation video yet. But you watch. Mark my word, they won’t find anyone to blame, and that bounty’s gonna sit there. There won’t be a video.”
“Revenge is a bitch.”
“Please. Bateman had a death wish the moment he got into bed with them. Those Armenians are ruthless. Between you and me, I say good riddance. The world’s a better place without that lying prick. Though it’s too bad we’ve lost our key witness.” She sipped some coffee. “I hear you’re working with Tim Knight
and Roman Novak. That’s a strong team.”
“They sure are.”
“Mmm, that Novak is a cutie.” She bit her lower lip.
Tammy would know, thought Michaels, because she’d consulted closely with Novak during Chase Lombardi’s money-intensive investigation.
“Once you’re finally ready to move on,” Tammy suggested, “I’d say he’d be a good place to start. Just something to think about.”
Michaels felt her cheeks get warm. Novak certainly was a catch. Handsome. Smart. Funny. Honest. The kind of man you could age with without sacrificing the physical chemistry along the way. What was there not to like? And she’d felt a spark between them from the start. But the idea of dating someone from work seemed like a deal breaker. Still…
“So tell me about this adventure of yours in Dallas.”
Michaels gave Tammy the blow by blow of her Cagney and Lacey stint with Agent Simmons and described how some good timing and a bit of luck had helped them net the first bounty confiscation in the investigation. “Can you believe that someone would put all that cash in the mail?”
“Sure,” Tammy said matter-of-factly. “We see it all the time. You don’t really think anyone actually checks all those packages, do you? The postal service is hurting as it is. Can you imagine if word got out that they were opening people’s mail?”
Michaels took out her phone. “I want you to have a look at what we found.”
She showed Tammy the pictures she’d taken in the back office of the truck-repair shop: the cardboard box, the bogus shipping label, the paperback novels that had been used as filler, the banded heaps of cash, and, most important, those unusual foil wrappers, which the forensic team had dismissed as superfluous. Tammy’s eyes, however, lit up the moment she saw the image. They grew even brighter when Michaels pulled a sample of the foil wrapper from her purse.
Bounty Page 23
